Stealing Light

Thirty

Nova Arctis was a standard G2 class star, mostly hydrogen and helium and a scattering of trace elements that had been moving in its long, slow orbit around the galactic core, accompanied by the other stars of the Orion Arm, for the better part of three and a half billion years. It might easily have expected to last five or six billion more before entering its red giant phase, at which point it would have slowly expanded to swallow the majority of the rocky worlds that comprised its inner system.

A moment before Corso noticed the Theona derelict was gone, a shell of exotic energy formed around the ancient Magi craft, tearing a hole in the universe, through which it then fell. The translation into transluminal space produced gravitational shock waves that rippled outwards, precisely as if a planetary body had materialized within the inner system and then disappeared again within the space of a single moment.

If the men and women in charge of administrating the Consortium had known what Corso and Dakota now knew, they would have understood that a coreship penetrating this deep into any populated system could only ever represent an act of war.

The Theona derelict rematerialized deep within the core of the star, a swirling mass of fusing hydrogen and helium that burned at fifteen million degrees.

By this point, Trader had stretched subjective time aboard the derelict to its absolute limit. He witnessed the violent plasmas penetrating the hull like bright tentacles, vaporizing the exterior of the craft in a millionth of a second.

From Trader’s accelerated point of view, the superheated plasma moved at a leisurely yet measurable pace. He felt the derelict’s systems shutting down around him as the vessel was reduced to a collection of free component atoms, merging with the violent thermonuclear dance beyond the evaporating hull.

The Shoal AI wondered, in the sliver of eternity before it ceased to exist, if it was the first intelligent creature ever to die directly within the core of a star.

Two millionths of a second after the derelict had materialized within the core of Nova Arctis, a vast burst of neutrinos shot outwards as the core of the craft’s superluminal engines collapsed. Then followed a phase change-a shift in the fundamental properties of the matter immediately surrounding the derelict, which now spread outwards in the form of a devouring black sphere, transforming the fifteen-million-centigrade plasma into something much closer to the primordial energy from which the universe itself had been born.

Yet barely more than a few seconds had passed since the ancient starship had materialized within Nova Arctis. At its point of maximum expansion, the phase-change volume encompassed several tens of thousands of kilometres within the star’s core. It began to collapse as the cosmological constant reasserted itself.

It made no difference to the fact that Nova Arctis was doomed. The final legacy of Trader’s virtual doppelganger came in the form of a whirling storm of singularities spinning outwards from the wreckage of the phase-change bubble, adding hugely to the destruction already wreaked.

Arbenz and Kieran had enjoyed a narrow escape from the Hyperion, moments before its destruction. There had been barely seconds to spare as they had crammed themselves into an escape vehicle and launched away. A few hours later, they were brought on board the Agartha in time to witness the Hyperion’s final plummet down towards Theona’s surface, which was now entirely wreathed in white clouds.

Following the destruction of Bourdain’s fleet, the path of action had appeared to be clear. But that changed irrevocably when the derelict had disappeared on its way into the inner system, even as the Agartha began falling along an almost identical trajectory.

On the bridge of the Agartha, Senator Arbenz gripped a railing tightly as he witnessed the derelict’s disappearance. Just then a roaring sound, like a waterfall, filled his head and occluded his thoughts.

‘Perhaps.’ he muttered quietly, to no one in particular, ‘we deserve to die.’

‘Senator?’

He turned to see Kieran’s puzzled frown. Mansell had been speaking with a very grim-faced Captain Liefe, commander of the Agartha, and heir to one of the Freehold’s most powerful ruling families. Liefe, like Kieran, had lost much back home because of the recent coup.

Liefe wasted no time. ‘Senator, the derelict that took off from Theona has just disappeared from every sensor system. It’s clearly jumped into transluminal space-’

‘I know.’

Liefe nodded. ‘But we’ve been continuing our analysis of Ikaria, and we’re definitely picking up extremely low-powered encrypted telemetry that matches that of the derelict. There’s clearly something else down there.’

Arbenz nodded. Along with the rest of the Agatha’s crew, Liefe knew nothing of the derelict’s more destructive capabilities, or that its disappearance might very well mean it had dived into the heart of Nova Arctis itself.

He caught Kieran’s eye, and saw the same thoughts mirrored there. If Liefe suspected that the entire system might be about to detonate, he might not continue performing his duty to the best effect.

Arbenz blinked his tiredness away. They might have just minutes still to live-or days. There was no way of knowing, but that didn’t mean inaction.

‘Then that settles it.’ he said, speaking more to Kieran than Liefe. ‘We destroy the remaining derelicts before they too have a chance to jump out of this system. Similarly, we destroy the machine-head woman’s craft before it can manage to rendezvous with any of them. That’s clearly what she’s planning.’

Liefe blinked, looking perplexed.

‘Senator-’

‘Remember who’s in charge here, Captain,’ Arbenz replied mildly. ‘Kieran here will be overseeing the operation.’

Arbenz saw the shudder that passed through Liefe as Kieran caught his eye. The latter’s deadly reputation extended far.

Emotionless bastard, thought the Senator, not without admiration. A machine in flesh-and-blood form, all the way to the bitter end.

‘Senator, I must-’

He cut Liefe off again. ‘We lost the first derelict because we were careless with the machine-head pilot. We were infiltrated, right from the very start. That doesn’t mean we can allow our enemies to win what we have lost.’

Liefe wasn’t a coward. His voice became more determined as he turned his back on Kieran.

‘Senator, with all due respect-’

‘With all due respect, Captain,’ Arbenz snarled, ‘if that derelict somehow just jumped into Consortium space with Merrick on board, we’ve lost this fight already. But I really don’t think that’s the case, given we’re still chasing her ship. We can clearly see where she’s heading, and the only possible reason for her current trajectory is because she thinks there’s something down on the surface of Ikaria that she can steal from us. I am not prepared to go down in history as the one who allowed that to happen.’

Liefe’s nostrils flared in anger, but after a moment he nodded sharply, saluted, then turned away to address one of his crew.

Arbenz meanwhile turned to Kieran, and saw a death’s-head smile creeping across the man’s face. The Senator felt a thrill of the same emotion Liefe must have felt when confronted with that same smile.

‘Merrick has altered her course to stay well inside Ikaria’s shadow-cone,’ Arbenz muttered, ‘and it’s not hard to guess why. If the worst happens, we might be able to find some shelter from the nova’s initial expansion by keeping that rock between the sun and us. I want you to watch Liefe’s every move in the meantime. The last thing we need now is insubordination.’

Kieran nodded. ‘She killed my brother,’ he half-whispered, eyes glistening. ‘If we’re to die, she dies with us, rest assured.’

There were shouts and exclamations from the far end of the Agatha’s bridge. They both turned to see Liefe and the rest of the bridge crew gathered around a floating display that showed an image of Ikaria, and Nova Arctis beyond.

Something was clearly happening.

‘Corso?’

As he woke, he could detect the strain in her voice. He blinked himself wider awake, trying to make sense of what she was now seeing on one of the displays. His body still ached from the constant stress of the gees they were being forced to endure.

‘Look,’ she said, her voice thick. ‘Nova Arctis-it’s changing colour.’

The filters that processed incoming data from the ship’s external cameras were shifting to accommodate a sudden radical shift in the star’s appearance. It was becoming redder-darker. As they watched, a vast loop of plasma, long and wide enough to cut through a Jupiter-sized mass, arced outwards from the star’s surface. Numbers flickered constantly next to the flare.

They continued diving down towards the surface of Ikaria, still locked into their acceleration couches, as the Piri’s engines used up the last of their fuel to drop them into a low orbit around the little world.

Corso glanced for the millionth time at the torrents of information sliding across the screens and the holo display, but the figures resolutely refused to change into something more accommodating to their continued survival.

He looked back over at Dakota, whose attention had drifted again, as it had done more and more frequently over the past twenty-four hours. The times she was fully aware of her surroundings were becoming rarer. It was getting easier to spot whenever the Ikarian derelicts were communicating with her: her face would become slack, eyes focused on some nonexistent horizon.

Corso had trouble figuring out what it was about this that so disturbed him, until he realized she looked less human every time she slipped into this strange fugue state.

Was it possible, he wondered, for her to slip so deep inside whatever dreams the Magi craft generated for her, that she lost track of where she actually was? Or was that just the voice of his own paranoia in the face of something he couldn’t begin to really understand?

He spoke her name gently, hoping she might respond. Nothing. Just that same, calm, semi-blissful mask.

‘Dakota’ he repeated, a little louder this time.

At last an acknowledgement: a blinking of her eyes as her head turned towards him

‘You do realize we don’t have enough fuel left to land on Ikaria without crashing?’ he said. ‘That’s assuming we could land all the way down inside that chasm, in the first place. We used up too much fuel just getting here.’

She smiled with a faraway look, like she was actually listening to someone else. ‘We don’t need to land.’

‘What?’

She focused more clearly on Corso. ‘We don’t need to land. We’ll just bring one of the derelicts to us.’

Within Nova Arctis, the cloud of singularities began to condense, adding to the core collapse. The collective gravitational attraction of the condensing cloud was more than equal to Nova Arctis in its entirety. Within minutes, superheated plasma that had flowed along the same convection patterns for millions of years would be sucked inward to the void at the star’s heart, drawn downwards at a considerable fraction of the speed of light.

In the end, Arbenz decided to tell Liefe the truth. It was obvious something fundamental was happening to the star anyway. Besides, all of Liefe’s crew deserved to die as warriors, with full knowledge of the fate that lay before them.

‘Inside its core? Liefe stuttered as Arbenz finished. The faces of the crew around them were pale with shock.

For a moment, Arbenz could see, the Captain actually suspected he might be joking. Then the truth of it all began to sink in.

Arbenz put a hand on Liefe’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before: the drive doubles as a weapon of unprecedented power. We need to destroy any remaining derelicts located on Ikaria, because if they’re allowed to get away they could be used to subjugate the Freehold-’

‘Arrest him!’ Liefe shrieked at his security officer. Liefe drew his own weapon and stepped back quickly, levelling it at Arbenz. ‘You should know that there were contingency plans in case you weren’t able to handle this this-’

Kieran moved from his static position with dazzling speed, his Challenge blade appearing in one hand for the briefest moment before it went hurtling across the bridge to land squarely in the middle of Liefe’s back.

The Senator watched the commander hit the deck, the hilt of Kieran’s knife protruding from his spine. The security officer fired his own weapon, catching Kieran on the shoulder. Kieran spun backwards, landing hard a few metres from where Liefe now lay twitching in his death throes.

Arbenz moved forward without a moment’s hesitation, pulling the pistol from Liefe’s dying fingers and firing three shots at the security officer. Two hit the man in the chest, while a third landed in his skull. The side of his head exploded messily.

Arbenz went over to Kieran and discovered he’d suffered no more than a bad flesh wound. He fanned his pistol around the remaining crew, most of whom stood in various poses of shock. Several appeared undecided whether they should try rushing the Senator or not.

‘Listen to me,’ Arbenz shouted hoarsely. ‘I am still your commanding officer by seniority of rank. Don’t forget that. What Liefe tried to do just now was an act of mutiny. Nova Arctis is dying because of a Magi weapon. You can see that clearly. I don’t know how long we have, but if you want to make your peace, make it now.’

‘You’ve killed us, Senator,’ said a young Lieutenant, stepping forward, his face full of cold fury. ‘We believed in you, and you’ve killed us.’

Arbenz stood, staring at the younger man angrily. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

‘Klein, Senator.’

‘Fine,’ Arbenz spat, throwing Kieran’s knife down at Klein’s feet. ‘I killed your Captain, and you have the right to try and execute me for that. My rank is civil, after all, not military. But you knew the risks, all of you, when you came here.’

He nodded towards the display showing the distorted, flaring face of Nova Arctis. ‘Just remember, in no time at all you’ll all be following me to hell, and nothing you do can change that.’

Arbenz punched one hand into the other. ‘Or we can make sure the ship directly ahead of us has no chance of escaping with what is by divine right our prize. If we die, they die. Wouldn’t you rather go out fighting?’

Klein stared back, his jaw trembling. Arbenz could see how scared he was, though he was handling it well.

After a moment the younger man nodded, a defeated look crossing his face. He bent down and slowly picked up the knife, stroking its sleek dark surface as he spoke.

‘All right,’ said Klein. He held up his hand when some of his fellow crew began to protest, and they fell silent.

Arbenz waited while Kieran watched from where he sprawled nearby, obviously experiencing great pain with every breath he drew.

‘We’ll obey your orders, Senator, because we can see for ourselves the evidence behind your words-but if you’re wrong, and we do survive this, we’ll make sure that people know your death was protracted, and we’ll be recording your pleas for mercy for prosperity. Do we understand each other?’

‘We do,’ was the Senator’s grim reply.

Dakota led Corso back through the command module, and then into the claustrophobic tunnel leading past her sleeping quarters towards the ship’s rear, just fore of the engines. He crawled through after her, cursing when she managed to kick him in the head as he was squeezing through. After several appalling seconds they emerged into a space so tiny their heads were forced together.

‘Listen,’ said Dakota, ‘see this door?’ She pointed to a hatch next to Corso’s shoulder. ‘There’s a one-man lifeboat on the other side, and here’s the plan. I’m going down to Ikaria while you stay here in orbit. I get on board the first Magi ship I come to and bring it back up.’

‘Uh huh,’ Corso replied, appalled. ‘That easy.’

‘Yes, that easy,’ Dakota snapped at him, grabbing him by the ear hard enough to hurt. ‘Don’t you think I can do this? I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I should have scrubbed my Ghost out of my head long ago. What I’ve got in here now is infinitely better. It’s like there’s an entire world inside my head, do you understand me?’

‘Not really, no.’

Dakota made a disgusted noise, her lips curling. ‘Then you’re just going to have to accept it. The Agartha is right behind us now, so there isn’t time for anything else.’

‘And what if you don’t come back?’ Corso demanded.

‘Then I guess we’re all dead.’